The Legacy of Eisenstein
Last night I started watching the epic and pseudo-historical film Alexander Nevsky directed by Sergei Eisenstein and photographed by his longtime collaborator Edouard Tisse. I'm hoping that this will be the first in a long line of films made by directors I've studied over the past several months that I will see between now and my departure for Moscow in late August.
Eisenstein is a giant in the history of cinema and his magnum opus, The Battleship Potemkin, is regarded by critics at the British Film Institute as one of the ten best films ever made. Not a bad praise for only his second major film. There is one particular sequence that stands out from that film, a scene known as "The Odessa Steps," in which a crowd sympathizing with a group of mutinous sailors is brutally attacked by Cossack soldiers. "The Odessa Steps" is the premier example of how Eisenstein splices together sequences of film to create a visually stunning and emotionally poignant aesthetic.
The climactic sequence of the scene is the depiction of a baby carriage careening down the long steps across dying bodies with its now-orphaned passenger screaming in terror. The scene may have looked familiar to some of you. This is likely because Brian De Palma pays homage to Eisenstein's groundbreaking sequence in his 1987 film The Untouchables. In one of the film's best, if incredibly violent scenes, Elliot Ness and Al Capone's henchmen have a gunfight in the middle of Chicago's historic Union Station.
(as an aside, notice the clock above the doors shows 12 o'clock. In the film it is midnight, but the scene also has the drama of a "high noon" showdown common in Westerns...and beware of a swear at the end of the gunfight.)
The tension in the scene is heightened by interspersing the scene with shots of a baby carriage careening down the stairs of the station. However, although we hear the sound of guns, glass, and footsteps on the marble floor, we don't hear the screams of the mother as in Potemkin.
The symbolism in De Palma's film is the reverse of Eisenstein's. Ness, like the Cossack soldiers, represents the power and authority of the State and is positioned at the top of the stairs. Unlike in Potemkin, the authority figure descends the stairs not to destroy life, but to save it (Ness hesitates, wary of giving up a more advantageous position, before chasing the carriage). While the Cossacks' descent highlights their amorality and depravity, Ness' reiterates his values and his integrity in sacrificing his own life to realize them. In essence, De Palma is using the same scene to give the reverse message. For Eisenstein, the State is powerful, brutal, and bent on subduing the will of the People, a message that meshes well with Eisenstein's revolutionary views. De Palma, on the other hand, reiterates the good of the State. Even in the face of overwhelming odds (Ness must initially face 6 men on his own), the State is virtuous, protective of the innocent, and has the integrity to do what is right even in the most dire circumstances. In spite of this De Palma, shooting his film sixty years after Eisenstein, constructs the scene in a way that shows clear respect for his predecessor and is a visual testament to the influence that Eisenstein has on film directors even today.
And then....there's this. I guess not all homage pieces are good ones.
The Oddities of Graduate Research in the post-Soviet era.
After taking a lengthy, and may I say well-deserved, break from thesis work, I have returned to the library (in the midst of some of the best weather of the summer) to patch the varied and many leaky holes in my rather hastily drafted thesis. I have to say that it is nice to be able to research with nothing else on my mind. Researching while doing coursework was a real bother, but I think that with little else to do, I can focus my intellectual energies into the narrative of this story I'm trying to write.
The problem lies in the fact that I am a post-Soviet scholar. It's a bit odd to be saying this over 15 years after the collapse of communism in Russia, but circumstances require that I think about this phenomenon considerably. Essentially, my problem is that, apart from the archival documents I've read, I have had to rely on sources (in English) written by British and American historians from the 70s and 80s. These historians, while doing the best they could with what was at hand, were at a considerable disadvantage as far as sources available to them. Often they had to work with limited materials and only one woman had access to the archives, and even that was limited. I, on the other hand, have total access to the organization's files and to a number of journals that others have not had. Essentially, it boils down to the fact that, at the tender age of 25, I am one of the world's leading experts on the Association of Workers of Revolutionary Cinematography (ARK/ARRK).
You'd think that such a realization was invigorating and it kind of is (as much as I don't want to toot my own kazoo, so to speak). There is another side to it, however. Studying this organization inevitably provokes questions that need answering. I have tried to answer some of these questions to the best of my ability, but inevitably some are simply out of reach either due to time or resource constraints. This being the case, I have fallen back on some of the conclusions of these Soviet-era historians.
Well, in the last few days I have returned to the library and read through some of these journals. It seems that every day I come across some new piece of information that severely undercuts some of the conclusions that I rely on. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or resources to fill these gaps and to answer the new questions that keep popping up satisfactorily. So as I spackle one hole in the drywall, I make another. It's frustrating.
So essentially my dilemma is this: I know more about this film organization than almost anyone else in the world (I don't know if there's an even more eminent authority in Russia). Unfortunately, even I know very little. Since I can't, in the words of Sir Isaac Newton, stand on the shoulders of giants, I have to rely on my own humble intellectual prowess. So it looks like, for the sake of prosperity, the blind are leading the blind here. It's like each new day brings frustrations that didn't exist the day before. Sometimes I just want to pull my hair out.
But, I have to admit, it's a pretty exhilarating experience.
Turning a pastime into a brain-wracking exercise
Last week I went to a lecture by a guy named Robert Pippin. He's a professor here at the university and he teaches philosophy. Anyway, he was giving a three-part lecture series on political psychology, violence, and order in American Westerns. At the lecture I attended, Pippin broke down John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, arguing that it is Ford's attempt to show the dilemma of myth-making as a necessary foundation of political units. In this particular case, Jimmy Stewart's character, a lawyer, wants to bring order to a town run by the maniacally savage Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). Ironically, in order for the law to be established, Stewart must kill Marvin, an act totally outside the law. Initially, Stewart's character is haunted by the reality of what he had done (even to the point of refusing to be appointed the town's political delagate). When John Wayne's character reveals to him that it was in fact he who shot Valance, Stewart, without any hesitation, changes his mind and goes into politics free of the guilt of murder (though also immune to guilt for a number of other reasons). Stewart is willing to live on the myth that it was he who did the killing because it means that his goal, political unity, is realized.
That was an overly concise summary of the film, but it serves to illustrate one of Pippen's theories: that the great philosophical and political debates of American society are dealt with not in great tracts of authors whom everyone has read, but on the silver screen, especially in Westerns, the most quintessential of American genres. This got me thinking about what other Westerns could be trying to say and it led me to watch (for about the 100th or so time), Howard Hawks' tour-de-force...
Yes, my friends, Rio Bravo. I tried watching it again to see if I could find out what Hawks was saying underneath that great story of good vs. evil, the personal struggle over sobriety, and a completely parasitic love story that contributes absolutely nothing to the main plot. I have no definitive answers, but some thoughts come to mind.
1.) A long time ago, I noticed that "talking" is a big theme in Rio Bravo. Feathers goes on at length about how she talks and Chance doesn't with phrases like, "From now on, I'll do the talking for both of us." At another point Carlos, trying to explain to Chance why he has a black eye, pleads with him not to talk. "It is better if I tell you, senor." Pat Wheeler is chastized by Chance for talking to much and to the wrong people. Ordering the mariachi band in the saloon to play the "De Guello" day-and-night is Nathan Burdett's way of talking. It's too common a theme to be simply coincidental. It seems pretty intentional to me. Why, I don't know.
2.) Tied up in the "talking" theme is the idea of communication. This is all over the place too, especially in some of the conversations that Chance and Carlos have ("Did you tell her she is a fool?" "I didn't say I was!"). Stumpy nearly shoots Dude because he thinks it was someone else. Conseula punches Carlos because she doesn't know why he is carrying Feathers out to the stagecoach. There are other examples, but I'm too antsy to think of them right now.
3.) Other tid-bits: the Mexicans all live in a slum outside of town (except for Carlos). One of the driving sub-plots is Dude's battle with alcoholism. Meanwhile everyone else is knocking back hard liquor left and right (we see Chance with a bottle of beer, but he never drinks from it). I think this is also one of the few Westerns where the show-down actually brings people out into the streets. The role of the viewing public plays a crucial role in how characters behave (especially when Burdett and his men come into town).
I dunno, that's just what's bouncing around in my head. I just thought the whole idea about Westerns as the uniquely American method of dealing with our particular philosophical dilemmas.
The procrastinatory joys of youtube.
Now that my thesis is done and one of my classes finished for the quarter, I feel like I have oodles of time. Granted, most of this time is now taken up my book reports and, shortly, essays. But still at least I was able to go for my first bike ride yesterday and it was fabulous. I'm looking forward to three or four good long rides a week this year.
On the other hand, I'm also less disciplined with my study time (since, hey, I don't have any more typing to do and way less reading), so I end up searching the ever so deep archives of you tube. I found a couple decent clips today.
Most people associate Andy Kaufman with either Taxi or, less fortunately, wrestling. My dad used to tell me about seeing him doing stand-up back in the pre-Taxi days and had said he was an incredible percussionist. So I found this clip from some variety show.
I also happened to look over some Steve Martin stuff and came across this rare interview he did with Johnny Cash. Unfortunately, Steve seems to think he's a sportscaster. Cash doesn't seem to mind too much though. There's a bunch of stuff after it, but you can just ignore it. It's only Kris Kristofferson.
And speaking of Cash, never let it be said that he didn't have a sense of humor himself. This is an old, old clip (like, before-he-had-a-drummer old). I'm pretty sure he was high as a kite on pills at the time, but hey, I still laughed.
Check this out.
Two of my favorite things, Russians and Sandwiches are combined in an amazing BBC article. Make sure to get a good look at the photo.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7391893.stm
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